Bridget ran through the park as if her life depended on it. She never bothered to look back, just ran until her face mottled purple in the heat of her working body; until there was a wide band of sweat encircling her brow. At the edge of the tree line, she stood hunched over with her hands on her knees, chest heaving for air. Her mind went completely numb after finding Jackson with blood on his hands, standing at the sink frantically scrubbing it away. She noticed a look of insanity on his face and how he smelled of panic.

Jackson didn’t notice her or hear her enter the apartment. He only knew Bridget was there when her elbow bobbled the vase of sunflowers from the table by the door. He watched them fall in slow motion. Each petal golden and beautiful, perfect. He saw them smash to the floor and smiled at the green smelling water pooling on the Berber carpet like magic. Jackson could hear each drip as it launched itself from the lip of the cherry finished table. He could hear her breath as it increased and the covered gasp when the vase landed, but did not shatter. He could hear the guttural tones lifting up into her throat though not escaping her mouth.

“Bridget….close the door” Jackson said.

She stood there unable to move. Her mind racing What has he done? What has he done? over and over like a chant. Bridget felt stuck with fear as he began to move from behind the counter towards her. She felt her skin rile up and the acid in her stomach began to boil and burn her esophagus. Ten years, she thought, and I don’t even know him.

He advanced on her and she began to back up instinctively, her hands flying up in front of her as if they would stop the bulk of his fury. There was a storm on his face she had never seen before, though it was so distinct, she wondered how she never noticed it resting there latent all these years. Bridget felt her back ram into the edge of the door and she cried out in pain, stumbling. Jackson’s blood-stained hands reached out to take her arm, still wet and smelling of darkness. He wrapped his fingers around her left bicep with a fierce grip, squeezing the tips into Bridget’s flesh until it blanched beneath them. She wrenched her arm backwards and surprisingly it came free, leaving someone else’s blood transferred onto her pale skin.

Bridget looked at it a split second before she turned and started running. Her feet flew down the stairs-floated like she did when she was a child. Jackson lumbered after her, shouting things she could not understand or process. The only sounds that registered were the thumping of her heart, the blood rushing in her ears, and the quickening of breath that pinched her ribs.

She stood there now, alone; nothing more than an accordion of flesh letting the body regulate itself and waiting for the sounds of life again that would ease her back into reality. Bridget felt a wind sweep up and dry the salt to her forehead. She felt the chilling deep inside her bones as her breath suddenly lightened and her limbs relaxed into themselves. She crouched on the ground with the smell of the grass under her nose. This somehow settled her as the first drops of rain began to fall. She felt like a pebble in the river, something far beneath the surface that could not be seen or touched. And in the juxtaposition of light, Bridget watched the bloody fingerprints begin to dissolve and run down her arm.

“Some things,” she said aloud to no one, “are best learned in storm.”

Et Tu?

Her long slender arm is a tanned perfection
extending from the shoulder length blonde hair
dappled in highlights from unnatural sun;
delicate fingers tipped in French manicure
run through the metro-sexual haircut
of her teenaged boyfriend.

She is showing off her abilities to please
in front of his brother.
He recognizes her polyandrous system
as he stares, eyes on her like a fox
from behind his coke glass, ice sliding
around his lips, freezing his skin.

His jealousy melts into envy with imperceptible lines
thinly cloaked by familia and brotherhood.
His body trembles, wishing her hand on him, instead.

How easily the blade could pierce close flesh.

I once dreamed of Bob Dylan

In a treehouse, one walled
and built from looking glass,
the old man spoke to me; leaves
colored like immanent death

drifted and swirled, their reflection
a knowing torture, and he said blankly,
“You must walk the highway
to get to the by-way.”

I blinked twice, flashing sea stones
at his face (cracked, dried mud in noon sun)
as he pointed to the lines on mine
that had not been written yet.

Vestige

I am a flesh accordion
being put away for the night
as cold water seeps over and under
my feet simultaneously. It is mercury.
I rise up, levitate, as if a cheap trick
at the magician’s fingers.

I am a river bottom vestige
when my body quietly slips
beneath a watery sky,
from ink to ink, writing an epitaph
on the rocks with my knees
about a life not yet lived.

Blogroll

Submit

Lit Up Magazine is whatever you want it to be. Send us your music, photos, video’s, news and events, your writing, opinions, whatever. This is your world. We want you happy. We want you here...all of you. Submit to litupmagazine@yahoo.com